Perhaps slightly OT, but also perhaps of interest: At thedewline.typepad.com/stephen_trimble/files/af_unfunded_priorities_list_2007.pdf there is a document called the FY 2008 Unfunded Priority List for the U.S. Air Force's budget for fiscal year 2008 (October 2007 through September 2008). On pp. 354-355 of the document, in a section titled Space Situation Awareness, it indicates that no money at all is currently in the budget for the "Commercial and Foreign Entities" activity. CFE is the origin of Space Track, which is the means by which satellite orbital elements (TLEs)are distributed. A congressional add-on of $1.2 million would be needed to fund CFE. See www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/gao/d02403r.pdf for more on CFE. See www.space-track.org/perl/login.pl for Space Track. According to some people with USAF contacts I've talked with, this defunding is due to a combination of budget crunch, belief at senior levels that the program is of little worth, and also some concerns about security risks of an unspecified sort. The latter concerns may be reflected in a more restrictive policy for distributing orbital elements that is apparently being formulated. I'm not sure how much of this is likely to come true, because there are good reasons to continue Space Track -- collision avoidance services are an obvious example. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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